(China Daily)
Updated: 2007-12-10 11:38

As people gradually realize that economic globalization is an irreversible trend, a practical problem arises: How to advance economic globalization in the direction of balanced development, shared benefits and win-win progress.

The world's peace and development will lose its solid economic foundation if this problem is not solved, says a signed article in People's Daily. The following are excerpts:

Economic globalization is actually a process of marketization of the global economy. It has expanded and intensified rapidly since the late 1980s as great progress was achieved in information technology.

Economic globalization has been a process full of contradictions. From the very beginning it was labeled as a "double-edged sword". There have been constant arguments against it in the past decades. And the problems behind its apparent prosperity are looming increasingly.

Undoubtedly, economic globalization is also an unprecedented opportunity for all. The world's industrialization and information popularization is now advancing rapidly. Profound changes have taken place in the international division of labor and economic growth. Manufacturing and related technologies as well as international capital are shifting to rising markets at a fast speed.

International and regional cooperation is driving the world's economy into a historical age of overall prosperity. According to the World Trade Organization, the total volume of global imports and exports reached $10 trillion in 2005 and $11 trillion last year. A report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development shows that the global FDI (foreign direct investment) flow exceeded $1.3 trillion in 2006 with growth faster than that of industrial production and foreign trade.

We have plenty of reasons to applaud economic globalization but also enough to worry about the increasingly unbalanced development.

Growing competition in natural, technological and human resources, and the reorganizing of the world's supply-demand relationship has accelerated the further centralization of wealth and widening of the North-South gap. Some countries are being gradually marginalized. According to WTO statistics, African countries, whose population accounts for 14 percent of the world's total, had only 2.9 percent of global exports in 2005.

The serious imbalance in growth has increased the risks in international economic development. Such negative impacts are expanding from the economic arena to other fields like politics, security, society and culture, becoming the direct cause for various contradictions and conflicts in the world.

The powerful position of developed countries in the globalization process has caused the unbalanced development of the world economy to a certain extent.

Objectively, developed countries with matured economic systems and social security systems, are strong in their capability to participate in economic globalization and respond to external impacts. Developing countries and some emerging economies, on the other hand, are in a disadvantaged position because of their fragile market systems, and weak financial systems.

Economic globalization should have been a positive force in theory but in fact, its potentials are not given full play. In some regions, globalization has even caused poverty. Developed countries hold the upper hand in capital, technology, and markets. This has led to unbalanced development.

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